Jersey Devil-real or unreal?
- Thread starter Barrens
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Dave,
I like your perspective on the Leeds devil and myth in general. When something influences a persons actions, interests and thoughts it certainly does lend merit to its' "realness". Fact is, more people are aware of the Jersey devil than they are aware of my own existence. How many people have lived and died and have been forgotten in the last 270 years while the Leeds devil has remained a constant. So is flesh and blood the only reality? Imagine how empty the world would be without all the intangibles.
Jeff
I like your perspective on the Leeds devil and myth in general. When something influences a persons actions, interests and thoughts it certainly does lend merit to its' "realness". Fact is, more people are aware of the Jersey devil than they are aware of my own existence. How many people have lived and died and have been forgotten in the last 270 years while the Leeds devil has remained a constant. So is flesh and blood the only reality? Imagine how empty the world would be without all the intangibles.
Jeff
Howdy folks. I'm hesitant to post this for my first post, but I did have something mildly eerie happen to me about a month or so ago.
I normally go fishing in the Pine Barrens and enter at Quaker Bridge road off of 206 and Atsion Rd. If you are familiar with that road, I normally make my first stop in a clearing by a small, wooden bridge. There is an old foundation and beaver damn there. It was about 5:45am and the sun was just about making it's way up. I get out of my Jeep and start to rig my fishing rod. As i'm tieing the knot, I heard a twig snap in the trees beyond the opposite side of my Jeep and then this really weird screachy sound which lasted no longer than one second. Like most of us here, I'm a very outdoors type person and I never heard anything like this before. It freaked me out, so I abandoned rigging my rod, threw my gear in the Jeep and shut the doors.
I don't know what it was as I didn't see anything. I regained my composure and completed rigging my rod inside my Jeep and proceded to fish the rest of the day.
I don't know how a creature could live as long as something born during Leed's time. If there are actual real eyewitness accounts, my guess would be that it was a rare, undiscovered species of sorts. There are primates in other parts of the world the size of your thumb. Our winters aren't bad enough here to where intelligent primates couldn't exist, albeit very rare. I think the Leeds baby and the sightings of certain creatures are unrelated.
I normally go fishing in the Pine Barrens and enter at Quaker Bridge road off of 206 and Atsion Rd. If you are familiar with that road, I normally make my first stop in a clearing by a small, wooden bridge. There is an old foundation and beaver damn there. It was about 5:45am and the sun was just about making it's way up. I get out of my Jeep and start to rig my fishing rod. As i'm tieing the knot, I heard a twig snap in the trees beyond the opposite side of my Jeep and then this really weird screachy sound which lasted no longer than one second. Like most of us here, I'm a very outdoors type person and I never heard anything like this before. It freaked me out, so I abandoned rigging my rod, threw my gear in the Jeep and shut the doors.
I don't know what it was as I didn't see anything. I regained my composure and completed rigging my rod inside my Jeep and proceded to fish the rest of the day.
I don't know how a creature could live as long as something born during Leed's time. If there are actual real eyewitness accounts, my guess would be that it was a rare, undiscovered species of sorts. There are primates in other parts of the world the size of your thumb. Our winters aren't bad enough here to where intelligent primates couldn't exist, albeit very rare. I think the Leeds baby and the sightings of certain creatures are unrelated.
Maybe this all started with the story of the werewolf man. My dad used to tell me about a man who lived in an old abondon car, next to the GreenBank Inn. This man used to walk up and down the road. According to my dad, he looked just like a werewolf, he even had a hunchback. He would see this man on his way to work in the morning to the cedar swamp. No one believed him, so on occasion he would take people with him to see the werewolf man. I knew one such fella, and he swore the story was true. The werewolf man really existed.
The Devil; seen or unseen
Gotta go with the non-believers on this topic. The legends and lore are fantastic, but they are just that; legends and lore. While the Pines are a one million acre tract of land, thats just not that isolated in todays world, especially when you consider a good deal of the area is accessible by car. Most likely the Leeds story, as someone mentioned, was turned into this tale that survived into modern times.
Gotta go with the non-believers on this topic. The legends and lore are fantastic, but they are just that; legends and lore. While the Pines are a one million acre tract of land, thats just not that isolated in todays world, especially when you consider a good deal of the area is accessible by car. Most likely the Leeds story, as someone mentioned, was turned into this tale that survived into modern times.
I agree that there is more legend/lore than any proof. The belief that it was used to scare children from going into the woods makes sense. And how did JD live this long? Who does he/she/it reproduce with to keep the family tree going? Does the family tree have any branches in it?
The Leed's family story is believable if you look at it as the malformed child being born and having possible complications from the birth and maybe to explain the baby away the legend was born. And just as if you sit in a circle and tell a story by the time it gets back to you it has been changed/modified so along those lines the story has changed into something that is a legend. I cant believe all the times I have been in the Pine Barrens at different times of the year, day and night, that i have seen nothing to hint at his existence. I have seen some weird things in the Pine Barrens but never anything to be described as the Jersey Devil, 13th Child of mother Leed's who hangs outr near the old abandoned trailer in the woods lol.
I have seen red eyes once in the woods for a second and someone else saw them as well so I was not alone but they were gone by the time we doubled back and that is the closest encounter I think I have had.
Has anyone ever seen the X-files take on JD? Very off beat. lol
The Leed's family story is believable if you look at it as the malformed child being born and having possible complications from the birth and maybe to explain the baby away the legend was born. And just as if you sit in a circle and tell a story by the time it gets back to you it has been changed/modified so along those lines the story has changed into something that is a legend. I cant believe all the times I have been in the Pine Barrens at different times of the year, day and night, that i have seen nothing to hint at his existence. I have seen some weird things in the Pine Barrens but never anything to be described as the Jersey Devil, 13th Child of mother Leed's who hangs outr near the old abandoned trailer in the woods lol.
I have seen red eyes once in the woods for a second and someone else saw them as well so I was not alone but they were gone by the time we doubled back and that is the closest encounter I think I have had.
Has anyone ever seen the X-files take on JD? Very off beat. lol
When I was 13 or 14 I was camping alone on the bogs north of hampton furnace, it was october. About an hour before dark I went for a walk along the road which borders the west side of the bogs .I was looking down at the road when something crossed the road in front of me.I never saw it only a flash of movement, but it left a lot of brush moving in its wake.It also sounded large, and the footfalls were heavy and it just did not sound like deer.Deer have that intermittent sound to their running as they bound through the brush.
I started to head back to camp , and yup you guessed it this thing is shadowing me back in the brush.It was very stealthy ,faint noises ,except when I would stop and stare for a moment there was this heavy thumping sound. I got back into my camp ( which was in the woods on the same side of the road as the sounds) it was starting to get dark.
I cooked dinner over a camp stove while my visitor circled, I did not want to go back into the brush for fire wood.After I ate I crawled in the tent and lay there listening.Then I heard something close,right behind the tent .I was trying to work up the courage to shine the flashlight out the back window when this thing started screaming,I have never to this day heard any sound in the woods that could come close to that sound.The volume was like a car horn at close range. It kept up this screaming and growling for several minutes ,I was frozen with fear. Finally I screamed "shut up!" it just stopped and walked off. After a sleepless night I got my gear together and hiked fast to Atsion. There were no tracks in the pine needles behind the tent and I was not about to look in the brush.
Well that is my story.It is hard to look at things the same after that.
some peopletell me it was a big buck in rut bellowing,well if deer can sound that loud we would need bigger guns!
I started to head back to camp , and yup you guessed it this thing is shadowing me back in the brush.It was very stealthy ,faint noises ,except when I would stop and stare for a moment there was this heavy thumping sound. I got back into my camp ( which was in the woods on the same side of the road as the sounds) it was starting to get dark.
I cooked dinner over a camp stove while my visitor circled, I did not want to go back into the brush for fire wood.After I ate I crawled in the tent and lay there listening.Then I heard something close,right behind the tent .I was trying to work up the courage to shine the flashlight out the back window when this thing started screaming,I have never to this day heard any sound in the woods that could come close to that sound.The volume was like a car horn at close range. It kept up this screaming and growling for several minutes ,I was frozen with fear. Finally I screamed "shut up!" it just stopped and walked off. After a sleepless night I got my gear together and hiked fast to Atsion. There were no tracks in the pine needles behind the tent and I was not about to look in the brush.
Well that is my story.It is hard to look at things the same after that.
some peopletell me it was a big buck in rut bellowing,well if deer can sound that loud we would need bigger guns!
